Last week, I was in San Francisco exercising my lighting design muscle for Ocean Thin Films’s booth at Photonics West 2011. Fun was had by all – I got to see Jax from JimOnLight.com, I got to see Phil Buchsbaum from Ocean Thin Films, Rick and Adri Hutton from InLight Gobos, and a ton of other folks who all had great times walking around, enjoying the awesome weather, and generally having a great time!

The rig was simple but effective – three handfuls of tungsten SeaChanger profiles, a handful and a half of Nemo Wash units (SeaChanger’s LUXIM lamp fixtures), and a couple of VL-1000 Tungsten for frosting.

Check out the rest of the images – click on a thumbnail and a magic gallery of images opens up!

See this dude here below? The guy in the lift?
That guy is Mark Hetrick. He is one of the coolest dudes I’ve ever met.

I have to say I am having a TON of fun on the floor of LightFair 2010 – this is a conference I will be attending each year! I walked around yesterday on the floor, meeting people, getting hugs from people, and generally having an excellent time. One thing that I am super excited about is that I HAVE A REAL PHOTOGRAPHER shooting work for JimOnLight.com! Everybody’s favorite Amanda Lynne Ballard is here, shooting pics and making me look GREAT! You have to see some of the work she got for you all, and make sure to thank her.

Check out some photos of the showfloor – if you’ve not been to LightFair, you need to make plans! This is a huge year for LightFair, most people ever!

“The Map”

WANT. NOW.

Part of Cree LED’s booth – AWESOME!

Peter Kirkup showing how he nerds his iPad into controlling the Orb. Awesome.

I love me some Peter Kirkup! This kid is a GENIUS!

I also loves me some Ginny Skalski from Cree – she’s the Social Media voice of Cree LEDs! What a rock star!

Green Man Walking

The biggest CFL I have ever seen. Ever.

That’s right – OptiLEDs immersed in water. How’s that for IP 68?

SeaChanger – in all if its greatness!

More OptiLED submersion

Finally – someone acknowledged Street Lighting!

Stay tuned – I’m here all week! Lots more stuff to come. I am very excited!

I am sitting in the Vegas airport waiting for my flight to board, thinking of all the absolutely awesome times I had over the last 72 hours. The NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center was a HIT for me – lots of people, lots of interviews, and tons of fun. A word to the wise though – Phil’s Steakhouse at Treasure Island gave me food poisoning, so I spent Monday afternoon and night holed up in my room puking my guts out.

<start Google Sarcasm tracking>Thanks a lot for the day of vomit, Phil’s Steakhouse.</sarcasm>

Tuesday was an unbelievable day – not only did I get to interview two of my favorite lighting designers (Jefferson Waful from Umphrey’s McGee and TJ Gerckens from – well, everywhere), but I also got to talk to Jeff Ravitz, John Gates, Jon Griffin from Saddleback Church, and many other great pros. A major thanks to Tom Stanziano and Phil Buchsbaum from SeaChanger/Ocean Thin Films for flying me out and allowing me to have outstanding conversations with outstanding people on film. What an amazing few days. Amazing.

The view from the hotel room in Kansas City – as far as midwest hotel scenes goes, not too bad!

I’m back from USITT 2010. I had a very huge fun time, most of it with the great readers of JimOnLight.com. I’m constantly saying that JimOnLight.com readers ROCK, and this last week I was reminded just how much you all rock. I met so many people that I have only known digitally, and got to see people that I haven’t seen in a while. An awesome week, to be sure.

Oh yeah, and I took a mega-ultra-super-metric-ton of photos and video. Get ready. Here’s a taste:

One of my favorite booths this year was SeaChanger’s booth. Besides the fact that they have a great product and are using the LIFI lamp like rockstars, SeaChanger had their standard setup – Eileen Morris (gourmet chef and wife of Tom Morris at SeaChanger) cooked those of us at the conference some of the finest food I’ve ever eaten. Most definitely the best omelet I’ve ever eaten.

The entire booth was lit by plasma sources – I have completely forgotten the percentage that Tom Stanziano gave me about how much less power the SeaChanger booth was using by having plasma lamps in their fixtures – but at least 30% less comes to mind. The light from these LIFI sources and the SeaChanger optics is pretty stunning. The booth itself is set up like a kitchen show – broadcast camera feeds to plasma screens, showing how nice the light appears on camera.

Quite frankly, it is a damned beautiful light.

Okay – omelets, Grand Marinier whipped creme on crepes, the SeaChanger color engine, and the LIFI lamp. This was a good combination for LDI 2009 for me!

I have some really interesting stuff coming up about SeaChanger this week – you have to stay tuned, especially if you like glass color filters…

Check out some images of SeaChanger’s LDI 2009 exhibit:

That’s my hand, and it’s resting on the cooling fins of the SeaChanger below using a LIFI lamp. Awesome.

Seachanger, the color mixing engine that you attach to a Source Four ellipsoidal, has just announced that they are selling a high-output color engine that runs on a LIFI lamp. LIFI – I blogged about this a few days ago, but it means “Light Fidelity.” It’s a high output lamp, very efficient, and uses plasma.

Plasma. The NEMO is 83 lumens per Watt. EIGHTY THREE.
Did I mention 83 lumens per Watt? NEMO outputs 15,000 lumens on a mere 180W of power.

The Seachanger NEMO, from older posts I made about the regular spot and wash units, is also the kind of unit where you attach a Source Four barrel to the device and go. NEMO is basically an HID source (in output terms) for a Source Four – like the Mole Richardson lamp units for the Source Four. All of the same filters and xG (extreme green) stuff come with the NEMO.

Say hello to Nemo, the latest in the SeaChanger range designed to deliver a new class of high-intensity lighting.

Nemo is the first ETC Source Four® compatible color engine with a LIFI® plasma source that delivers 15,000 lumens on a modest 180 watts of power. That’s over 6 times the efficiency of comparable color engines.

The SeaChanger Nemo uses existing ETC Source Four front-end barrels as well as an assortment of ETC FOV optics. It comes equipped with SeaChanger’s own Extreme Green wheel that extends the CMY color gamut to create more dramatic, vibrant colors.

Because of its lamp life, Nemo is the perfect solution for hard-to-reach installations, domes, atria and theme parks. It bridges the gap between incandescent and LED lighting at a price that’s within reach.

All you need for this accessory is the lamp base housing – that’s what makes it awesome. The SeaChanger Wash Color Engine basically turns the Source Four lamp housing into a color mixing fresnel, with all of the same dichroic guts as the Profile color engine. The wash barrel on the unit has a 20° to 70° zoomable beam spread, which again turns this unit into a little bit of awesome.

The next show that I spec these on, I will take a lot of pictures of the unit. In the mean time, check out SeaChanger’s product page on this device.

If you’ve ever tried to mix deep primaries with color filters, then you know how much of a pain in the rear it can be – until the SeaChanger came along. The SeaChanger color engine is a device that modifies your Source Four ERS units into color changing spot fixtures with CMY/G mixing capabilities.

CMY/G, you say? Yeah. Green. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and a patented “Extreme Green” dichroic that adds the ability to mix deep hues, add subtleties to colors, and create looks that aren’t possible with color scrollers and faders. Dichroic filters are utilized inside the unit, which are glass, so the colors don’t fade – and the need for cooling fans doesn’t exist, so the unit is silent as well.

SeaChangers are capable of all of the standard ETC beam spaing tools as well, so you can add gobos, irises, gobo rotators, gobo changers, etc to the unit.

Check out the product page. I’ve used these only a few times, but every time I discover something else I love about them.

Did You Know?

An incident beam of light is a beam of light that strikes a surface; the reflected beam is the light beam that leaves the surface.